Internet Changes Everything

Major Retail Sites Struggle With Online Performance

Yahoo! News - Major Retail Sites Struggle With Online Performance
Wed Dec 17, 9:00 PM ET

Major online shopping sites continue to struggle in delivering fast service and in completing sales to holiday shoppers, an Internet performance tracker said Wednesday.

Nevertheless, retailers showed some improvement last week in handling the stampede of shoppers, recording an overall success rate of 95.98 percent, which is better than the previous week's six-week low of 93.68 percent, Keynote Systems Inc. said.

Keynote analysts found last week that performance on the sites dropped at the beginning of the workday, improving as the day wore on.

The online holiday shopping season peaks about 10 to 14 days before Christmas, experts say. So expected increases in volume this week could create problems for those sites that have not been tested and readied for the expected shopping rush, Keynote said.

Overall response time last week was 15.03 seconds, which was slower by several seconds than the three weeks before Thanksgiving.

Online consumers spent $8.5 billion in November holiday shopping, up 55 percent from the year-ago period, according to Goldman Sachs & Co., Harris Interactive and Nielsen/NetRatings.

San Mateo, Calif.-based Keynote sells web performance measurement and management services to companies.

December 18, 2003 at 12:02 PM in eCommerce | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home